17th Annual Saints Cyril and Methodius Lecture sponsored by the Byzantine Catholic Seminary Held May 11, 2017
Guest Speaker: Very Rev. Peter Galadza, PhD
Topic: Vatican Guidelines for Church Music: Eastern Christian Prospects and Problems
This year’s lecture, held at St. John Cathedral Center, was attended by almost 140 people including Metropolitan William Skurla, faculty, staff, seminarians, graduates and members of the Board of Directors of the Seminary.
The sacred music of the Eastern Churches is among the great gifts bequeathed to them by Tradition. In several documents, among them the Vatican II Constitution on Sacred Liturgy, Church authorities have attempted to sensitize the universal Church to the importance of singing in worship. Fr. Peter Galadza reviewed some of these documents and discussed where Byzantine Catholics are and where they can be when it comes to using this gift. The talk was illustrated with audio and video clips from several Eastern Catholic churches.
Fr. Peter Galadza is Kule Family Professor of Liturgy and Acting Director of the Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies. After completing his M.Div. at Chicago’s Catholic Theological Union in 1981, he was ordained to the presbyterate by Patriarch Josyf Slipyj and served in parishes until 1988, when he completed a M.A. in liturgy at the University of Notre Dame. He went on to earn a Ph.D. in theology from the University of Saint Michael’s College in the University of Toronto. From 1994 to 2004, he edited Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, and in 1997, became convener of the Eastern Liturgies Study Group of Societas Liturgica. During the 1999-2000 academic year, Fr. Galadza served as dean of the L’viv Theological Academy in Ukraine. In 2003-2004, Fr. Galadza was a research fellow at Harvard University’s Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Research Center in Georgetown, Washington, DC. He is also editor-in- chief of the recently published “pew book,” The Divine Liturgy: An Anthology for Worship and past president of the international Society of Oriental Liturgy. His wife, Olenka, is a high school teacher and iconographer. They have three children.
The annual lecture series is sponsored by the Byzantine Catholic Seminary of Ss. Cyril and Methodius. This year’s lecture was followed by a question and answer period. A reception followed the lecture.